


a disembodied soul, stranded in time

by Anonymous



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcoholic Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Booker | Sebastien le Livre Needs Therapy, Booker | Sebastien le Livre-centric, Exiled Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Psychosis, Psychotic Booker | Sebastien le Livre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:09:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27243991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It has been six months since he thoroughly ruined his life.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40
Collections: Anonymous





	a disembodied soul, stranded in time

**Author's Note:**

> 2 things inspired this: a tumblr post that I cannot stop thinking about
> 
> [and this video by Libertarian Socialist Rants, where he describes his psychotic episodes.](https://youtu.be/kgJ1_nd3BQo) I do not have psychosis, but the derealization and dissociation (and the delusion of guilt) are very relatable to my kind of neurosis, so I wanted to write some Booker with psychosis. 
> 
> I tried to be as realistic as possible, so fair warning for delusional thinking, hallucinations, heavy guilt and dissociation.
> 
> Open to edits if you see anything that should be corrected. Just be nice!

Booker feels guilty all the time. It's deserved. He's burned bridges, trailing undrunken alcohol behind him, lighting the match and watching it burn.

He deserves to be in that fire. They should have chosen capital punishment. Burned alive, guillotined, torn asunder, hung. All better than being left alone with his guilt.

It claws up his throat and he burns it back taking a swig. 

He knows when he's thoughts don't make sense, can always feel it coming on before he starts believing it as his reality.

He doesn't know when it started. That emptiness and haze first arose when he was alive again, clawing his way back to France in the winter snow. It made sure he couldn't remember that travel, and his newfound curse made sure no physical traces remained as well.

It came and went while his wife was alive, and stayed for a long time when she was no longer by his side. Then one by one he lost his sons, losing his youngest at the same age he would remain forever.

After he buried Jean-Pierre, that haze remained, for months. It was grief, Nicky told him. It took until he had regained his medical license in college again before he gained that proper definition. The war zones they entered and exited with differing results gave him an understanding of people that modern medicine was just able to catch up on, define, and develop tools to help those afflicted.

Booker wasn't afflicted, this was his eternal judgement. He didn't deserve a diagnosis or help. he didn't deserve anything, what exactly does he deserve, after what he has done.

If he had killed Andy he would have made Nile make him stay. Penance, something tangible. No apology, no exile. Imprisonment, he deserved that. 

Then the haze went away and the guilt came, sharp and bright. Like a dog biting into his arm, trained to maul, where he cannot heal until he pulls it off. And his thoughts get scattered, loud, pervasive, and _off_.

Was his suicide quest with Merrick a delusion? He wanted to know how they kept living, so he and Andy could die, but was there any intelligent design in the first place to how they stayed alive? Did he know that his plan with Copley made no sense once everything fell apart in Sudan? Maybe, but there was that thought in the back of his head that screamed and screamed at him. His guilt. 

How dare he use this to excuse his behavior. There was no excusing what he did. And the voices increased in their repetition. Guilt thumped in his brain. 

The voices never sounded like himself. They sounded like Joe or Andy or Nicky, or someone they've saved, long since passed to the continuation of time. Booker winced at the loudness of the yelling, imagining a radio dial, the one when they were with the Resistance in France hearing Hitler was dead. Instead of turning it up, he turned it down, and his thoughts quieted.

His thoughts are plausible, his thoughts are right. He's correct in thinking that there is a car with government plates down the block from his apartment. When he breaks in in the middle of the night, he trashes it looking for proof, and only finds a college student's belongings. He's correct, they've just gotten better at hiding. CIA maybe, or INTERPOL. Copley again? Or someone who's latched onto his tail? 

His hallucinations are less plausible. At first he can ignore his youngest son, knowing that he stopped looking like the crying boy he was when he father went to war hundreds of years ago. Remembering exactly what he looked like on his death bed makes it easier to ignore his ever changing shadow in the corner of his eye.

When he starts talking to him Booker knows he's far gone. He's murmuring nursery rhymes he sang to his boys when they were younger, murmuring into the bottle as he downs a sip, feeling his son's presence at his elbow and wanting it so badly to be true. How much one more chance would mean to him is unquantifiable.

"I miss you, I'm sorry," He whispers into his son's hair. He was born blond and it darkened with age, just like his older brothers. They grew it out long, until he fell into a thorn bush and they had to cut it off to treat his cuts. Booker can feel the strands as he cut them, his wife soothing their boy as he cried in pain. He felt his hair now, knowing that when he opened his eyes Jean-Pierre wouldn't be there.

He keeps looking out for the telltale sign that a camera is recording, a flashing red dot. But cameras don't look like that anymore, they're upside down darkened circles so that way he could never see which direction its pointing in. He collects the wireless streams for all of the cameras he comes in contact with. From his apartment to the market, to the liquor store, to the park to the cafe, all on his laptop, all instances of himself erased. He's never had a particularly good sleeping style, and now it has gotten worse. Spending all night hunched over his computer and tracing and retracing his steps throughout the day to make sure every instance he crosses over the cameras is caught and removed.

Police and ambulance sirens have him with his pistol in his hand. Right under his pillow, or in his lap, and he waits with bated breath for it to move away from him. He set up scanners that would alert him whenever there was a police presence near him. And stayed awake whenever a helicopter passed above.

He was trained to be diligent, was this too much? There was a reason they feared capture, and he failed them in allowing for the greater possibility of it. No one was supposed to be taken, just whatever they left behind in Sudan.

No one was supposed- but it didn't matter his intent, only that he let them get captured. If he were more suicidal, if he didn't think that Andy wanted death too, he would have given himself up and they would never find him. He would have gotten his wish, and they would be a well functioning trio again. Until Nile came along and fit right in, the way he couldn't and would never again.

Maybe his plan didn't make sense. In every instance where Joe or Nicky or Andy asked him how he was doing, that year they were away, he lied. A voice he couldn't pin down, a boy from his Sixth Form class, a girl from Bosnia or maybe the Soviet Union? Perhaps his second son, the one he lost first after his mother, who's voice has gone salt water taffy soft with time. Speaking plainly, like he was telling his father about something he learned from a childhood friend, telling him that they couldn't know what he was doing. Booker listened and he lied, performed the facade he's crafted well. Out of necessity, couldn't have his (former) forever team know of a broken wheel. Whenever he was feeling this way, never as bad as he felt right now, he performed for them. Danced and sang and smiled, all while feeling like this wasn't real.

And they believed him.

He was a failure, a worthless man. What did he ever do to deserve their trust and their love. All he was going to do was set them alight and pour his drink upon them in a failed attempt to cool the flames. They are right for the 100 years, and hopefully they were considering making it permanent.

He chose this, but he made some good decisions in there. Not to tell Copley about Nile. Didn't shoot Andy in the head. Tried to explain himself without fully blaming Joe and Nicky. He could never explain his thoughts in a way that made sense. So often he gave up and said he didn't know. Someone had to understand, and he knew no one would by the time he finished his tirade. Strapped to those tables, he thought in those few hours before Nile came crashing in, that he would have the rest of eternity locked in and explaining himself. No matter how much he could never explain it right.

He's lucky he never had to. 

  
  
  


He finds himself on the roof of his apartment complex, feeling present for the first time in a long time, swaying to the wind carrying the smell of fresh snow. It nipped at his cheeks and he shuffled the whiskey bottle around to pull his collar up. Barely helped. He started down the stairs.

Near the last step before his own door, he pulled out his phone. Sitting down hard, he checked the time, and noticed the date. He didn't see his bottle fall from its perch beside him until he heard it shatter.

It has been six months since he thoroughly ruined his life.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Again, open for corrections or any additional tags? if need be!
> 
> Leave some kudos or comment if you'd like!


End file.
